


inertia of grief

by sootings (collapsing)



Category: Dream SMP (Fandom), Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Math and Science Metaphors, Minor Injuries, Presumed Dead TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), please check the notes for warnings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29851293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collapsing/pseuds/sootings
Summary: Tubbo has been here before—he thinks that maybe the grief never actually stopped, not when Tommy came back for the discs half-wild and fully bitter, not even when Tommy had asked, broken,What am I without you?Tommy’s never been the most considerate person. He’d never thought to ask the opposite, and now here Tubbo is.or, lately Tubbo has grieved too much and too often for Tommy.
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	inertia of grief

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer / this is based on the dsmp characters and is not a reflection of the actual ccs behind them.  
>   
>  **warnings:**  
>  -references to tommy's suicidal ideation/attempt and his death in the prison, which will remain non-graphic  
> -descriptions of scars and violence  
> -allusions to abuse and manipulation  
> -severe lack of sense of self/self-worth from tubbo's part  
> all relatively non-descriptive and canon-typical. stay safe.

Tubbo thinks his reaction was quite reasonable.

Sam, voice wracked with what he’ll later recognize as guilt, looks in disbelief when Tubbo can’t bring himself to react. Tubbo doesn’t think that’s quite fair—if anything, _he_ should be the disbelieving one. Who is he to take the word of one man, shaken as he is, and believe it? Especially when it comes to Tommy?

Tommy, who has cheated death so often that its shadow seems to perpetually follow him by now. Tommy, who has survived so much bullshit that it seems improbable now. Tommy, who did not throw himself off a tower after all.

Fool me once, Tubbo thinks, shame on you. Fool me twice, well. He knows how it goes.

Tubbo has been here before—he thinks that maybe the grief never actually stopped, not when Tommy came back for the discs half-wild and fully bitter, not when they shoved each other out of the way as fireworks pierced through their armor, not even when Tommy had asked, broken, _What am I without you?_

Tommy’s never been the most considerate person. He’d never thought to ask the opposite, and now here Tubbo is, washed ashore from the alternating waves of denial and grief. There’s been so much in so little time. Tubbo can barely make sense of it all.

The thing is, it’d been so fucking overwhelming, seeing Tommy wearing Techno’s colors and screaming words that weren’t his. He can almost catalog the emotions, if he tries: relief (obvious and painful), fear (because _Technoblade_ , what the hell was Tommy doing, calling an anarchist an ally?), betrayal (because this was _Tommy_ , yelling at him), nausea, and an undercurrent of embarrassment. He can’t shake that last one, remembers practically fucking begging for Tommy to set the discs aside for one fucking second, and in response, _The discs, the discs were worth more than you ever were!_

He supposes that’s true. He’s not worth much, anyways. A pawn pinned from all directions. If only he could move, then maybe, _maybe_.

* * *

Inertia dictates that objects at rest will remain at rest until a greater force pushes it over. Tubbo has been in denial and will remain in denial until—

* * *

It doesn’t make any fucking sense, is the thing. Sam tells him again, later, more slowly so Tubbo can try and wrap his head around it. It only makes him more frustrated and confused—he can make sense of a tower and a deserted Logstedshire, he can’t make sense of why the prison locked Tommy in, why anyone was setting off explosives in the first place, why Tommy would even go near Dream to begin with.

He still doesn’t really know what happened in exile. Tommy talks endlessly, but he either circled around it or shut down the conversation entirely. Which is fair. Tubbo’s certainly never spoken about what it was like working for Schlatt. It’s not really a matter of secrecy but rather just trying not to reopen old wounds.

Not that it really works. He’s learning that time doesn’t really heal all wounds, and whoever told him that was a liar. Probably Phil—one of those meaningless things he says as empty platitudes. Or maybe that there just hasn’t been enough time. Phil’s had centuries. Tubbo gets mere moments between mourning periods; he distantly recognizes that he no longer reacts with the same depth of emotion, his brain still playing catch-up to the last horror.

Some wounds that have yet to heal:

  * the ugly firework wounds, sparking across his sternum. They’d have scabbed over by now, like the splotch on his face, if Tubbo didn’t keep picking at them absentmindedly.
  * a gash on his shoulder-bone, which wouldn’t’ve been too bad if it had just been the thin cut from that scuffle with Tommy, but it’d been slashed deeper from Dream’s axe.
  * the phantom hand clasping his shoulder, which is alternatively Wilbur, Dream, and Schlatt.
  * the hollow space in his chest carved out by Tommy. Tubbo had been the head to Tommy’s heart, which was fine when things were good. Now, he’s learned that it just leaves him with the numbness.



Huh. _Had been_. Past tense.

So maybe Tommy’s dead.

Tubbo knows to expect one, two deaths. He doesn’t know how to process three, much less four.

He goes through the routine—he hates that that’s even a thing—he cuts himself away, he gathers the materials for a memorial, he allows himself to think about Tommy. He allows himself to think about the _bright_ parts of Tommy, not the shattered pieces of a boy that had come back from exile but his bright, infectious love for music, adamant that you needed nothing more complicated than oak wood and cobblestone.

Everything’s complicated, now. Tubbo can’t think of anything that’s direct and clean-cut anymore.

Tubbo has been planning this funeral for a while, ever since the tower in Logstedshire. He’d feared the worst when they tried to trade the discs, again when Techno and Phil released withers like a hall-of-mirrors version of the first L'Manburg, and again when Dream strung them along to the highest mountain.

Originally, it would’ve been a hero’s funeral. In front of a nation that he’d fought and died for, with the friends he’d fought and died with.

Now, he doesn’t have a nation and he doesn’t have friends, not really, not out here. He doesn’t even really have attachments to any particular object. If Dream were to escape, he wonders idly, what could he even take from him? His feelings are muddled and worthless to a god looking for exploits.

But Tubbo has always been more logic than feeling—no, that’s a lie, he’s always felt too much, too strongly, to be good at making reasonable decisions. Maybe it’s better put this way: Tubbo has always been better with his logic than his feelings. Tubbo has always been better at physics than caring for other people, at least in a way that actually helped. Tubbo has always been better with objects and theories and basically anything that wasn’t alive.

(Secretly, Tubbo has thought of himself as dead. It goes back to when Schlatt was president and he was a spy: if he returned information, great, if he died, well. It didn’t seem to matter much either way. He’s been dead through his entire presidency, too, stepping around ghosts and jumping at shadows, never actually living. Maybe that’s why he offered to let Dream kill him, because what use is a dead boy to a nation, to his best friend who was just learning to want to live again?)

Tubbo’s alive, though. That’s got to count for something. That’s got to be _useful_. He can make himself useful, until the pit in his chest is less about the devastating drop and more about the nothingness at the bottom.

It occurs to him that he did have attachments, only now they've been taken from him—L’Manburg, twice, and now Tommy, also twice.

Tubbo knows he isn’t any good with living things, himself included. He’s better with machines and cogs and nukes, himself included.

* * *

Inertia also dictates that things in motion will remain in motion, and there is no force strong enough to stop a boy who has lost his best friend again again again.

* * *

His initial response, after the realization that yeah, Tommy’s _gone_ , is anger. He wants to push back, he wants to punch something or some _one_ , he wants to feel the same satisfaction as when his nuke test had worked.

He’s never thought of himself capable of thinking like this. In the past, he’s always reacted with expectation in mind—he forgave Technoblade first so they wouldn’t be down a powerful ally, he’d exiled Tommy for the safety of his people, he told Dream to hurt him for the discs. But there’s no peace left to protect. Dream’s taken that from him, and now Tubbo can grieve however the fuck he wants. It feels dangerous. Maybe this is how Techno felt, hell-bent on the destruction of a government he knew mattered to others.

Or maybe not. Tubbo tries to point his rage at Sam, when he’s explaining what happened again, but he’s seized with the desperate terror: _What if I’m wrong? What if it’s not his fault?_ Sam’s having a hard enough time with it as it is, his faith in his complete duty to the prison shaken. Tubbo thinks about using his nukes, but in the end he doesn’t have the complete surety in doing the right thing, not the way Techno or Phil had.

Maybe he’s still full of those weak, flighty feelings. Snowchestor, complete with the baby piglin tucked away in his attic, isn’t quite the same as an _attachment_ , but he doesn’t want to lose it, either.

He wants someone to blame, he thinks, but he’s also terrified of getting it wrong. He can’t jump to the wrong conclusions again. _Fool me twice, shame on me._ He has to think it through logically. Tubbo won’t let himself get blindsided again, not for something this big. He’ll find out who’s to blame.

His process has to be rooted entirely in logic, which means he doesn’t get very far. Tubbo finds evidence of TNT and maybe the sand and gunpowder that went into its creation. He steers far away from the prison grounds—something about even being near it makes the desolation in his chest go deeper, and Tubbo can almost feel Dream’s hand cutting through his shoulder. (Impulsively, he checks for bleeding, even though it stopped needing bandages two weeks ago.)

He checks the Vault’s rooftop though; it’s hard to imagine that he had wanted to visit this place, Sam’s architectural genius of a prison, only a week ago. There’s snow missing, displaced, probably, maybe even by an explosion— _the_ explosion. It makes him almost giddy, for a second, to have figured it out. It’s proof of concept—something happened here, and it was foul play.

And that’s it. A little bit of snow, some misplaced sand and gunpowder, and that’s all there is. Tubbo can’t help but think it’s almost pitiful, that this is what his dead-end looks like. It’s barely anything, and it’s all he has left of Tommy.

* * *

Inertia does not dictate what happens to the force that first acted on the object. The object keeps moving regardless of if the force still exists. The object is a freshly-seventeen year old boy, and the force is ( _was_ ) an almost-seventeen year old boy who is gone gone gone. There is an emptiness where there was Tommy, there is a history that screams TOMMY WAS HERE and now there is silence, discs locked away in an ender chest that won’t open. Life plows on and doesn’t stop, not even for an object in grief.

* * *

It haunts him that there’s just something _missing_ , something that he needs but doesn’t have. Wilbur had once said that Tubbo could figure anything out, that he was especially suited for making the logical jump from Point A to Point B without a map in hand. It should be the same thing now, his intuition as his compass.

But Tubbo doesn’t trust his snap judgement. He knows his instincts are pointing in different directions like spokes—Ranboo, Foolish, Jack—even though he thinks he might trust them and he doesn’t know how he feels about that, if he feels anything at all. Tommy’s alive and then he’s dead and then he’s alive again and then he’s dead again.

He’s holding puzzle pieces to a picture he doesn’t fully understand.

Tubbo has always been better with logic than feelings. It’s better for him to push down the guilt, the anger, and let his grief sharpen into a detective’s keen eye. He’ll find it out. This time, he’ll know exactly what happened. This time, he won’t get it wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> im the astrophysicist dream hired /j
> 
> if you want, leave comments/kudos, or hmu on tumblr @ [boatstrats](https://boatstrats.tumblr.com), it really makes my day  
> 


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